To call Greece First World may be a stretch, but Greece has defaulted
once already, and it is only a matter of time until Greece defaults
again. Welcome to default-o-rama, the next chapter in the First World's
struggle for fiscal sustainability.

Japan is piling up debt in the manner of a nation beyond hope.
France, Belgium, Spain and Italy are defaults waiting to happen unless
Europe can somehow generate the kind of growth that has eluded it for
decades.

America's fiscal cliff is an artificial crisis. We have no trouble
borrowing in the short term. But at some point the market will demand
evidence that long-term balance is being restored. President Obama said
in his first post-election press conference that he doesn't want any
proposals that "sock it to the middle class." He knows better. A
long-term socking is exactly what's coming to the middle class, which
must pay for the benefits it consumes.

A few years ago, when the economy was
humming, a common estimate held that federal taxes would have to rise
50% immediately to fully fund entitlement programs. Today, a 50% tax
increase would be needed just to meet the government's current spending,
never mind its future obligations.

One way or another, then, entitlements will be cut. Don't call it default. The correct term is entitlement reform.

You saw this day coming and saved for
your own retirement. Don't call it default when Washington inevitably
confiscates some of your savings, say, by raising taxes on dividends and
capital gains. Taxpayers accept the risk of future tax hikes that may
make the decision to save seem foolish in retrospect.

According to economists Robert Novy-Marx and Josh Rauh, state and
local taxes would have to increase by $1,385 per household immediately
to make good the pension promises to state and local workers, including
firefighters and cops. That's not going to happen given all the other
demands on taxpayers. Default, in this case, is the proper word for
cities and states using bankruptcy to repudiate their pension
obligations.

Prominent voices ask why the Treasury shouldn't just cancel the
government bonds the Federal Reserve has been buying. It's money one
part of the government owes the other. Dispensed with, of course, would
be the idea that the Fed, in buying these bonds in the first place, was
engaged in monetary policy. The Fed was printing money so Washington
could spend it.

Now let it be said that inflation isn't fundamentally a solution to
the entitlement problem, but the Federal Reserve is being led by
increments to accommodate inflationary financing of future deficits.
Don't call it default. Inflation is a risk savers are deemed to have
accepted by putting their faith in the U.S. dollar.

Here's what you weren't told about
Medicare during the presidential debates. Under the Paul Ryan plan, the
affluent would pay more. Under the Obama plan, the affluent would flee
Medicare to escape the waiting lists, shortages and deteriorating
quality as Washington economizes by ratcheting down reimbursements to
doctors and hospitals. Don't call either default. You don't have a
legally enforceable right to the free care you imagined you were
promised.

"Don't worry" was President Obama's
implicit message during the campaign: If cutting subsidies for Big Bird
is unthinkable, a joke, how much more so cutting benefits for
middle-class voters?

Don't go running to a judge when this doesn't pan out. The courts do
not overrule changes in government policy just because citizens find
their promised free lunch isn't forthcoming. Nor will it be fruitful to
appeal to politicians' sense of "fairness." Politicians can be relied on
to do what will get them re-elected. And, believe it or not, that is
the good news.

If politicians weren't eager to be re-elected, the trust necessary to
be an investor would vanish altogether. While there is no escaping our
challenges, there is a path in which the economy grows strongly and we
don't savage each other, and there is the other path. For years the
trustees of Social Security and Medicare were accused of exaggerating
the programs' deficits by envisioning that America's long-run growth
would become more like Europe's. Now who doesn't fret that America's
growth is becoming permanently slower like Europe's?

Which brings us to President Obama. He
knows cuts are necessary but seeks to position Democrats politically as
the defender of all spending. Notice that, with ObamaCare, he is
deliberately creating a constituency of the young to set against the old
in future fights over the allocation of federal health care dollars.

Meanwhile, saving the dynamism of the U.S. economy, while still
affording an entitlement state, naturally falls to the other party in a
two-party system.

A version of this article appeared November
24, 2012, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal,
with the headline: None Dare Call It Default.

This is that original
This has no identical
You can't hack my digital
Future Aboriginal
Get up off my genitals
I stay on that pinnacle
Kill you with my lyricals
Call me verbal criminal
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Subscribe you some Chemicals
Audio and visual, can't see me, invisible
I'm old school like Biblical
Futuristic next level
Never on that typical
Will I stop I never know...

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Everyday I'm party'in
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Pop'n bottles, minglin'
Ladies danc'in to the jam
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Yeah I keep it happenin'
Taken shots, whatever man
Party like a veteran,
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You won't fine me settlin'
Can't be stopped I'm steppin in
Keep it goin till the end
Yeah that's right here we go again

I'm that one that lights it up
We red hot like fire trucks
Burn that roof, cause that's what's up
Tell the DJ turn it up
We droppin, that music, for people all around
Keep rockin', head knockin'
Cause they can't shut us down

Ain't ain't no stoppin'
We gon keep on rockin',
Baby ain't no stoppin,
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I ain't gonna stop until I'm done (don't stop it)
I ain't gonna quit until I've won
Now baby don't you stop it, stop it
Now baby don't stop it, stop it
Now baby don't stop it, stop it, stop it
You can't stop us now...
I ain't gonna stop until I'm done (don't stop it)
I ain't gonna quit until I've won
Now baby you don't stop it, stop it
Now baby don't stop it, stop it
Now baby don't stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it
Even if you wanted to, you couldn't stop us now...